This passage did not serve as the basis for much commentary in early Christianity,
as far as I can tell. Eusebius (Dem. ev. 7.2) connected the quotation to
the holy anointing oil for the high priest in Leviticus 21:12, where the Hebrew
term nēzer (נזר) is used. John Chrysostom (Hom. Matt. 9.6)
suggested that Matthew may have had access to a lost prophetic book. Jerome (Comm.
Matt. 2:23), like Eusebius, interpreted the term “Nazarene” through the
Hebrew nēzer, “holy,” or a different Hebrew word, neṣer (נצר),
used in Isaiah 11:1 and often translated “branch.” This last suggestion is
still often made, along with a few others; modern scholars rarely pursue the
course suggested by Chrysostom, that Matthew quoted an apocryphal book.47 Especially
since Matthew introduces the quotation by attributing it to “the prophets” in
the plural, modern scholars sometimes argue that the Evangelist did not intend
to reproduce the wording of any Scriptural passage but rather to summarize a
prophetic theme (though debate continues regarding what precisely that prophetic
theme is).(Edmon L. Gallagher, The Apocrypha Through History:
The Canonical Reception of the Deuterocanonical Literature [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2025], 72)
